In 1912, Jacob H. Schiff gave almost 10,000 books and pamphlets to the Library of Congress. It was a prodigious collection of Hebrew and Yiddish materials, and since then the Library has added over 190,000 works to this existing collection. This digital celebration complements an ongoing in situ exhibit at the Library, and it has a nice sampling of items from the Library's holdings. After checking out the About area, visitors can click on over to the Themes section to get started. Here visitors can make their way through The People of the Book, Gates of Prayer, Holy Land, and Beauty in Holiness. This last area is particularly noteworthy, as it features a beautiful version of the book of Esther executed by Israeli artist Avener Moriah and a gorgeous modern Passover Haggadah by Asher Kalderon.

This remarkable collection consists of over 850 audio reels recorded primarily by Dr. Kenneth S. Goldstein. He was a folklorist, record producer, and teacher who happened to also find time to serve as chairman of the department of folklore and folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. These audio tapes include interviews with musicians and storytellers, recitations of folktales from Newfoundland and Labrador, Pennsylvania, and Scotland. First-time visitors might do well to look over the English Language Folktale reels and then move on to perform their own detailed search across the entire archive. Visitors can also elect to receive updates on th e collection via their RSS feed.

Housed at the Special Collections Department of the James Graham Leyburn Library at Washington and Lee University, the Robert E. Lee Papers document several key aspects of the military leader's life. Along with collections at the Library of Congress and the Virginia Historical Society, this offering represents the third key archive of personal letters from Lee to a host of political and military figures in 19th century America. Visitors can browse around the letters by date, author, title, or subject. Currently there are 188 letters available here, with plans to add more in the future. The letters cover matters mundane and monumental, ranging from an 1837 request for the construction of a steamboat a nd engine to an 1855 note to Secretary of War Jefferson Davis recommending Lee's relative for an Army appointment.

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University has a wealth of digitized materials related to African American women. This particular collection brings together three noteworthy collections: Elizabeth Johnson Harris: Life Story; Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson: Slave Letters; and Vilet Lester Letter. This last item is particularly noteworthy as it is a very rare item indeed: a letter written by a female slave. The Elizabeth Johnson Harris: A Life Story area brings together the full text of her memories, along with several poems and vignettes published in various newspape rs in her lifetime. She was born in 1867 to parents who had been slaves, and the memoir includes information about her own childhood and the importance of religion and education in her life. Finally, the last section brings together letters written by Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson to their mistresses and other slave family members in Abingdon, Virginia.

The Gifts of Speech site brings together speeches given by women from all around the world. The site is under the direction of Liz Linton Kent Leon, who is the electronic resources librarian at Sweet Briar College. First-time users may wish to click on the How To… area to learn how to navigate the site. Of course, the FAQ area is a great way to learn about the site as well, and it should not be missed as it tells about the origin story for the site. In the Collections area, visitors can listen in to all of the Nobel Lectures delivered by female recipients and look at a list of the top 100 speeches in American history as determined by a group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Texas A & M Univ ersity. Users will also want to use the Browse area to look over talks by women from Robin Abrams to Begum Kahaleda Zia, the former prime minster of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

The
mission of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History
of Women in America is to document "the lives of women of the past and
present for the future." The library is part of the Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and interested parties can
peruse the Library's announcements, scholarship opportunities, and
digital collections here. The Picks & Finds area is a great place to
start, as it contains a range of interesting posts and essays like
"Dining with Dissent: Politics and Protest in Vegetarian Cookbooks."
Visitors shouldn't miss the selections from the Kip Tiernan papers. Mary
Jane
"Kip" Tiernan was known for her work with organizations that aided the
poor, homeless, and socially oppressed. One of her most notable
accomplishments was the creation of Rosie's Place, which was the first
emergency drop-in shelter for women in the United States. Additionally,
the library has the collected papers of the late Julia Child. In the
overview of area, visitors can listen to Child talk about their culinary
collections and also view selected papers. [From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013.
https://www.scout.wisc.edu/]

Based
at Middle Tennessee State University, this valuable database gives
interested parties access to digital collections of primary sources
(photos, letters, diaries, and so on) that document the history of women
in the United States. Visitors can browse the database by subject,
place, time period, or primary source type. There are many fascinating
resources and links here, including letters from Abigail Franks to her
son from the 1730s and 1740s and Katrina Thomas' wonderfully evocative
photographs of various ethnic weddings. Even a close appraisal of items
listed by primary source is delightful, as the headings here include
everything from broadsides to
buttons to trade cards. One particularly noteworthy collection
contains the papers of the late Irene Kuhn, who was a global traveler,
journalist, and social commentator. [From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013.
https://www.scout.wisc.edu/]

Abraham
Lincoln has been the subject of a variety of works, including plays,
poems, songs, music videos, movies, and countless academic studies and
dissertations. Between 1940 and 1952, the Abraham Lincoln Association
published 52 issues of "The Abraham Lincoln Quarterly," which contained
original articles regarding all facets of Lincoln's life and the world
in which he lived. The University of Michigan digitized all of these
volumes and they are now available on this site. There are hundreds of
articles here, but visitors might do well to start with the very first
one from the very first volume: "When War Came in 1861." Another
fascinating article is the piece "Italy and Lincoln" from March 194
4, which addresses the response to Lincoln's assassination from the
Italian people. [From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013.
https://www.scout.wisc.edu/]

Monday, April 22, 2013

There had not been a scholarly edition of the works of the influential Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB) in over a century, the last having been published in 1900. A five-volume print edition of EBB’s works was published in 2010, with Sandra Donaldson as the general editor. The new edition provides readers accurate and accessible texts with annotations on context, composition, and publication, creating a reliable foundation for more complete analysis and interpretation of EBB’s works and of Victorian Britain. [From the website]

The Knight Digital Media Center offers workshops to mid-career journalists to enhance their expertise and multimedia skills. Our goal is to provide the foundation of technical skills and story-telling techniques required by New Media platforms. We are housed at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. We also provide tutorials and video presentations from industry experts.

The Knight Digital Media Center was launched in April 2006 to focus on helping journalists succeed in the rapidly changing media landscape of the 21st Century. It is built on the foundation of the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism which trained more than 750 professional journalists between 2000 and 2006, as well as providing at least 75,000 more journalists with access to resources and online training opportunities through the efforts of its fellows.

The tutorials on this site are designed to supplement the in-person training seminars put on by the center, and as a service to the journalism community, communication professionals and the public in general.

The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a long-term project dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating, and publishing all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his entire lifetime (1809-1865).